


Gone By Morning

by akire_yta



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Kid!Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 08:57:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4660470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before, they were two kids, on the road with their dad.  And kids get sick.</p><p>(pre-series Supernatural, in response to the t-shirt challenge)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone By Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not mine, though I'd love to own that tshirt!

[The Challenge](http://trollprincess.livejournal.com/1299625.html)  
[My Shirt](http://www.noisebot.com/an_orange_meets_his_citrusy_mother_t-shirt)

For the first time since he had packed up his life and left, creeping out in the middle of the night like one of the damn ghosts and ghouls, John let himself think it.

_Maybe I should have left them behind._

He winced, and rubbed his brow with calloused fingertips as he sat back in the uncomfortable motel chair. For a while there, he actually thought this might work – the boys were small, but they had adapted, simply treating the Impala like their own mobile playroom, bedroom, home, never asking when they were going back, just where they were going next. And Dean, Dean was so good already at looking out for his baby brother, keeping an eye on Sam when John was distracted with researching a hunt, or patching up after one.

And so when Sammy started to cough and wheeze, John had stolen the medicine that Mary used to buy, but it was Dean that curled up under the covers with Sam, and held his hand as he shivered and wheezed. When he had come in yesterday, dirty and covered in god knows what, he had found them in a nest on the floor in front of the crappy black and white TV, thin motel pillows stacked around them in a fort to keep the night at bay (and was it wrong that they knew now what the night held? Could he have protected both his boys and their innocence? He’d never know for sure). Sammy, curled up in one of his father's shirts, sucking on his thumb as he finally slept; Dean wrapped around him bodily, pudgy little child hands fisted into the worn fabric like he was never letting go.

John considered moving them for a moment, then let them be. After tonight, the fire and blood he had no time to clean up or wash away, there would be questions. They were drifters in the eyes of the law, textbook subjects. Better to be far away by sun up. 

Sammy barely stirred as his father scooped him up, flannel shirt and all, and tucked him into the new nest of blankets he had built for his sons in the back seat. Dean stumbled out after his father, knuckling sleep from his eyes as he climbed into the back without demure, reaching for Sammy even as John made fast the seatbelts and checked one last time for any trace of their passing. Nothing left here to say they had ever been. The first licks of sunlight were just flickering over the horizon as he nosed the car out of the parking lot and onto the Interstate. 

He drove in silence, letting the purr of the engine and the hum of the tyres lull him into the trance that was becoming familiar; a way not to go crazy as the number of miles travelled piled ever higher.

A whimper snapped him back into full alert. Looking into the rear view mirror, he could see Sam’s face, eyes closed, deep asleep. Another noise had him looking for a place to pull over. “Dean?”

When Dean didn’t respond immediately, John wrenched the wheel and drove onto the shoulder in a spray of gravel. Dean looked up, eyes huge and bruised-looking in his pale face. “I don’t feel good,” he muttered.

John softened as he touched his son’s brow, feeling the clammy heat there. “It’s okay, son. You just caught Sammy’s bug. But we’ve still got some medicine, and at the next town we’ll stop and get orange juice, and anything else you want.” In his mind, he could hear the echo of Mary murmuring a similar soothing refrain. He swallowed hard and forced a smile. “You’ve just got to be brave a little while longer. Can you do that for me, son.”

Dean nodded and buried his face into Sam’s nest of blankets. John reached in and rearranged them so they were covering both his sons. “There you go,” he murmured, helpless as Dean shivered slightly despite his climbing temperature.

Face buried in the cheap fabric, Dean made a low noise, pain and fear balled into a sound. “I want mommy.”

And John’s heart broke all over again. Brushing his fingers over Dean’s soft hair once more, he forced himself back into the driver’s seat. John kept his mind focused on the job at hand as he started the car and drove, holding steady at fifty-five until he found a motel. He pulled in calmly, paid in cash – “Just one night…” _Please don’t let it be worse than that_ – brought the car around and carried his boys inside. Sammy barely stirred, but soon he would be awake, hungry, demanding attention from his father and his brother. Dean grumbled slightly, swatting at his face as if he could physically fight the fever that already had him in his grip.

John ran a cloth under the pathetic stream of cold water in the bathroom basin. He wiped down Dean’s face gently, trying not to wake him. He tucked in the blankets, and pulled the curtains tight. He checked the lock on the door, pulled a shotgun loaded with rocksalt from the bag, and pulled over the uncomfortable motel chair to sit vigil over their sleep.

His own head was pounding from lack of sleep, and he rubbed his brow with calloused fingertips as he sat back in the uncomfortable motel chair. 

_Maybe I should have left them behind._

But they were his boys, and he was their father. They had him and they were all he had. This wasn’t what he wanted for them, but right now, he couldn’t see it happening any other way.


End file.
